How to Draw a Shark

In today’s drawing exercise, we are exploring ocean creatures and showing you how to draw a shark. Shark illustrations are great for educational drawing books, cool designs for your skateboard, or fun stickers. From underwater exploration scenes to sublimated pillow covers, you have a world of possibilities.

Gather your drawing supplies for this shark clipart. Our drawing exercises cater to traditional and digital artists. So feel free to use what you have on hand or what you are most comfortable with.

Feeling inspired to create more ocean and sea life clipart? Check out our drawing lessons on how to draw an octopus or drawing an orca. Perfect for your sea creature crafts and projects.

Step 1 - Make Rough Sketches of your Shark

Use a pencil or light-colored medium to make rough sketches. You can use just about anything as your sketching medium, as long as it can be erased or covered.

If you do not have a removable sketch medium available, use a light-colored medium that can be hidden when color is added later on.

Create the Shark Body Shape

Beginning with the main body base, roughly sketch a long horizontal oval shape. The left side of the oval will be the back of our shark and the right is the front. In our image below, the bottom part of the shape is raised slightly on the left. This is the curve of the underbelly of the shark leading to the tail.

Add the Shark Fins

A shark has fins on most of its body including the back and the sides. Following our visual guide below, we have indicated where each fin is placed. Start at the top, close to the center, and draw the large first dorsal fin.

Sketch the smaller, second dorsal fin closer to the rear. At the left end of your shark, draw a big boomerang shape to create the caudal fin.

On the bottom from left to right, add the ventral fin in line with the second dorsal fin. In the middle, add two small fins for the pelvic fin. Lastly, on the right, sketch the pectoral fin.

Add the Details

Add your final details to your shark sketch, such as the eyes and gills. Our sketch below shows these details added in red. Close to the right edge, add your eye as a line with a small bump. Then, for the gill openings by the pectoral fin, add five short vertical stripes.

Finally, add a pattern, shown in blue, as we did in our image below. This pattern runs along the bottom edge and at the top of the dorsal fins.

Step 2 - Define your Shark Sketch

With a lining medium, trace over your rough sketch to create a defined shark outline. Only outline the areas you want to keep, ignoring any overlapping lines. Using Procreate to make your outlines? Try these ink Procreate brushes for different outline styles.

Step 3 - Add Color to Your Shark

With your preferred color medium, select the gray or blue shades you want to use. In this step, you are going to add color and create blending with texture brushes.

Tip: Use the Procreate smudging tool and blend your colors to create a soft blend between the shades. Explore textures, blending, and colors to create your unique ocean animal.

With your shark drawn and colored, why not add paper textures or watercolor effects to it? We have a huge selection of texture paper that you can use with an overlay effect.

When using blend modes in Procreate, you can add more depth and dimension to your drawings. Thank you for following along with our sea creature drawing guide. We hope you had as much fun as we did, learning how to draw a shark.